Internet Traffic : Getting Traffic to your Blog (pt.1)

I have been getting questions on how to get traffic to your blogs.  Here are some tips that can help you achieve that:

1. Use Lists.
2. Be topical..write posts that need to be known.
3. Learn enough to become an expert in your field.
4. BREAK news!!!
5. Be timeless…write posts that will still be readable in a year.
6. Be among the first to compose a great blog on your topic.  Afterwards, encourage other to blog on the same topic.
7. Share your experiences and expertise generously so people can recognize you and trust your information.
8. ANNOUNCE news.
9. Write short, to the point posts.  Try not to exceed a paragraph.
10. Encourage readers to help you manipulate the “top blog list”.
11. Don’t write about your dog, boyfriend/girlfriend or your kids…no one wants to read it.
12. Write very definitively.  Meaning write to where everyone can understand it.
13. Include polls, meters and other eye candy for viewers.
14. Tag your posts! (Hint: use del.ico.us.
15. Coin a term or two.
16. Do email interviews with the well known and share responses.
17. Answer your emails and reply to comments.
18. Use photos in your blogs.
19. Be up close and personal (let people know who you are). 
20. Encourage your readers to subscribe via RSS feeds.
21. Include comments so your blog becomes a virtual water cooler and feeds itself.
22. Assume every day is a new beginning because you ALWAYS have new readers.

Keep posted for more steps to making your blog more popular and profitable.

Internet Traffic Tips

I want to thank all of you that have been reading my blogs and leaving wonderful comments.  The number 1 question I am getting though, is “Why did you put all of this in your blog?  Why not sell this information in an EBook?”  Well here is your answer!  All of these tips have come from personal experience, friends and co-workers that are all into making money online.  I know that all of you have heard the angelic guru story.  If not, let me refresh your memory.  You go to one of these “money making” websites and as you are reading the information you come accross this line “I make tons of money online and this is the absolute lowest I will sell this information for…….” or “I am giving the people just starting out, a chance to make money online….”  This is all bull!  If you want to help someone, give them the building blocks to start a solid foundation in the e-commerce world.  So that is what I did.  All I want in return is comments telling me how well you all did using these 77 tips.  I am also going to be coming out with about 50 tips on how to make your blog really popular and profitable. 

Internet Traffic : Tip #1

Traffic tip #1

You MUST have high quality, unique content if you want long-term,

free search engine traffic.

This is the most important tip of all. Sadly, it’s one which many website

owners ignore.

Provide LOTS of information-rich, keyword-rich, useful content for the

search engines and humans to find.

You know that search engines are being clogged with junk at an alarming

rate. The other day, I came across a marketer who was boasting that he

owned more than 20,000 blogs - and he’s not the only one.

Consider the scary effect of this exponential increase in low quality blogs

and websites. Old, large, well established sites will inevitably become more

and more important and trusted by the search engines.

Owning a large, well established, high quality site is a very solid investment

in your future.

These days, even Google’s webmaster guidelines advise affiliates to

publish “unique and relevant” content.

If you spend time thinking of ways to provide truly USEFUL content that

people will talk about, you’ll automatically end up with lots of free, one-way

links to your site as people recommend it without even being asked to do

so.

I’ve been building information-rich websites ever since I created my first site

in 1996. This method has worked extremely well for me and continues to

work very well.

If your website helps solve people’s problems, they’ll love you for it.

Internet Traffic : Tip #2

Traffic tip #2

Keep ADDING fresh, relevant, useful content.

According to Google, about half the 2.5 billion searches done a day at

Google are for unique, one-off phrases.

The more pages you build full of on-topic material, the better the chances

your site will be found.

When it comes to keywords, think big. You want your site to be found via

THOUSANDS of different phrases every month.

Then you can lure that traffic to your best money-generating pages or to

your newsletter sign-up page.

Also, search engines prefer fresh sites which keep gradually adding new

content. Don’t let your site go stale.

Super affiliate James Martell says:

“My own rule of thumb is this: Add a minimum of 1 article per week, 2

preferably. Adding an article daily is euphoria and adding 1 every six

hours, well, that’s the best.”

Internet Traffic : Tip #3

Traffic tip #3

Choose a memorable domain name.

If you’re launching a new site, choose a name people will remember easily.

Years ago, I visited a site called “forkinthehead.com”. Its logo is a man with

a fork in his head. Sounds dreadful, doesn’t it?  However, all it took for me to remember that unusual site was ONE visit

years ago.

You may not wish to go to such extreme lengths, but at least ask yourself:

“Will people remember my domain name?”

At my four main sites, a large percentage of the visitors are people who

have remembered the domain name and typed it directly into their browser.

(I also own a site built in 1996 which has a totally impossible to remember

URL, but that’s another story.)

Try to choose a name which won’t be confused with similar names. You

don’t want people typing your competitor’s domain name when they’re trying

to find your site.

NameBoy.com has a handy tool to help you choose domain names. Also,

you can find a surprising number of good deleted (expired) domain names

at Whois.net. Both those tools are free.

Internet Traffic : Tip #4

Traffic tip #4

Buy the wrong domain name, too.

If you think people may confuse your domain name with a similar name, try

to buy that name, too.

I noticed that sometimes when newsletters mentioned

AssociatePrograms.com they put the “s” in the wrong place and called it“AssociatesProgram.com“.

It even happened at an Internet marketing conference I was attending. The

speaker kindly mentioned my site, but got the name wrong. Whoops!

So when that wrong domain name became available, I bought it. 

Now, if you muddle up the name and type “AssociatesProgram.com“you’re automatically redirected to

AssociatePrograms.com.

It occurred to me that people in the United Kingdom, Australia and New

Zealand, who think “programs” is spelled “programmes”, might also have

trouble getting my domain name right.

So I bought AssociateProgrammes.com, too. It also redirects to the

correct domain.

A good domain name registrar will make it very easy for you to redirect one

domain name to another. 000Domains.com is one that does.

Internet Traffic : Tip #5

Traffic tip #5

Make your domain name easy to read – especially if it’s a .NET

Which of the following is easier to read and understand?

www.associateprograms.com or www.AssociatePrograms.com

See how using a capital letter at the start of each word makes the second

domain name easier to read – and easier to remember.

Whenever you mention your domain name anywhere, ALWAYS present it

in its most readable form. A good place to start doing this is in your email

signature file.

If you’re unfortunate enough to have bought the “.net” version of a domain

name because someone raced you to the “.com”, help people to remember

your site by writing it like this…

Example.NET

Being MEMORABLE helps you get more repeat visitors.

Internet Traffic : Tip #6

Traffic tip #6

Use appropriate keywords in your image file names.

One of my websites gets hundreds of visits a month from people who are

searching for images. I’m not sure how valuable those visitors are, but I

didn’t have to do anything very special to get them.

Google Images – http://images.google.com - makes it easy for people to

search for graphics online.

To take advantage of this, when choosing the file name of an image on your

site, use an appropriate key phrase, for example, “book-ends.jpg” if you’re

promoting book ends.

Here’s a tip I just discovered…

When I searched in Google Images for “book ends” I discovered that the

very first search result was for a page which did NOT contain a graphic of

book ends!

Instead, the page contained a “book ends” LINK to a book ends graphic on

a second page. It if suits the design of your site, you may want to

experiment with this technique.

I’m not sure how much use traffic to images is, but if it’s ADDITIONAL traffic

you can get simply by choosing image file names carefully, it’s worth

having.

Internet Traffic : Tip #7

Traffic tip #7

Do REALLY SERIOUS keyword research.

If you want to get LOTS of traffic from search engines, you need to find out

the exact phrases which people are typing into search engines.

There are free tools available for this, but they’re not nearly as useful as the

more comprehensive paid tools.

For example, if you’re using the Overture keyword tool for your research, be

warned, its results can’t be trusted.

As my Special Projects Manager, Jay Stockwell, likes to point out, the

Overture tool shows you the SAME number of searches for all these

searches:

bikini girls

girls bikini

bikini girl

girl bikini

bikinis girl

girl bikinis

This is obviously nonsense.

The Overture tool is useful to give you a quick rough guide, but NOT for

serious research.

Here’s a good tip from “Charlie” on our affiliate forum:

“The harder it is to discover a certain search phrase (getting traffic), the

less competition you will have in the SERPs (for that search phrase). If

a keyword research tool is free and popular, how many competitors will

you have for the phrases you discover there?” 

Jay has spent hundreds of hours researching and analyzing keyword

research tools. He’s built the best site on the Internet reviewing keyword

research tools – KeywordWorkshop.com.

You need to visit Jay’s site whether you’re using search engine optimization

(organic SEO) or pay-per-click advertising.

Internet Traffic : Tip #8

Traffic tip #8

Try this page titles experiment.

Here’s a good way increase your traffic.

Go to Google and type any phrase into the search box. Look at the titles of

the websites in the top 10 rankings.

Which ones catch your eye and tempt you to click on the link? Some are

dreadfully stodgy, boring. Some are merely a long list of keywords. Some

are good. Some are junk.

Good titles are written for search engines AND humans.

Now look at the titles on your site. Start with your most important pages.

Rewrite them to make them more eye-catching.

Now go to Google and do a search of your site like this…

site:example.com

Study the page titles. If you own a large site created over many years, you

may be horribly embarrassed at just how BAD some of your page titles are.

Do you want to find some examples of good titles? Simply go to Google and

do some more searches. Don’t stick to your industry. 

Type in all sorts of different phrases and study the titles that appear in the

top 10.

You’ll soon be brimming with ideas on ways you can improve your page

titles.

Checking how enticing the information is in your meta description tag can

help, too. Some search engines display this information in their search

results.

If you have a well established site, you may have written many of your page

titles and meta descriptions years ago when you knew less about marketing

than you do now. If so, it’s time for another look at them.